Named after a triple system that lies light-years away from Earth, the Keid is Mionix's first contender in the gaming audio realm. Mionix strives to create professional yet ergonomic products, two criteria kept well in mind during the development of their maiden headset. Today we sit down to see if the Keid 20 shines brightly or fades away.

PackagingThe Keid 20 is held in an attractive black cardboard container with a plastic window pane occupying a little over half of the front. This allows for a direct view of the product showing off some of it's most pertinent features. On the reverse side is a graphic highlighting those features and a few paragraphs of overview and specifications.

The hardware is very easily accessible, simply unfold the top and slide out the plastic bay in which the Keid rests. Indentations in the plastic keep the headset secure with a twist-tie holding the microphone in place. Stashed underneath the Keid is a nice leather carrying bag and a small reference card.

ApplicationThe input cord is about 3m or almost 10 feet has braided cable and has 3.5mm gold-plated audio/microphone plugs. The Keid features a volume control built into the cord about a foot from the headset. When worn this will fall somewhere around your hip/lap area for easy access. This control lets you set the volume anywhere from 0 all the way up to 11 and also features a mute switch for those private offline conversations.PerformanceAs mentioned, the Keid is named after a star system but Keid also means 'egg'. This is usually something good to hear, since the shape of an ear is more of an oval and an egg tends to cover more comfortably. The Keid 20's ear cups, however, couldn't be more circular. That doesn't necessarily mean bad, just as any headset with egg-shaped cups doesn't mean they're good.

When you first put the headset on the top cushion expands on a suspension system as the top of your head hits it. In other words, it will automatically adjust comfortably to the size of your heads. The Keid uses two thin plastic strips for the suspension to run on and after testing two samples, each consistently pulled more from the left ear than the right. It wasn't extremely noticeable at first but over time you pick up on it and find yourself manually centering the cushion on your head.

The sound quality is good and has a max level of 100dB +/- 3, which is pretty close to the par set by competing professional headsets. The ear cups are equipped with memory foam to help form them to you ears but it does nothing for noise cancellation One can still hear exterior sounds with the headset on and others in the room can easily hear audio vice-versa. Even with the comfort foam on the ear cups after using the Keid for extended sessions they did become a bit uncomfortable around the ears. Enough so to that again I had to stop and try to re-adjust them.

The microphone does feature passive noise reduction. This helps prevent background noises from being transmitted during use. A great feature, especially for enthusiast gamers who are likely to be sitting close to a reasonably loud computer. The Keid 20 also sports at 20 - 20,000 Hz frequency response, which is very close to it's high-end competitors.

OverallThe Keid 20 comes in two colors: black and white and looks sharp in either. More importantly they sound good. Though it may take a few tweaks and adjustments every now and then to keep headset comfortable for the most part. Although, at prolonged gaming events such as LAN parties you may find yourself fidgeting with them instead of catching your opponent who just snuck behind you with those damn Model 1887 Akimbo shotguns.

Adam is a big proponent of LAN parties, esports and speed-running, and helps organize our semi-annual LAN events. He has covered hardware and software reviews of a wide variety, but most content these days come from event coverage, such as other LAN parties.